Beam me up

I went to the Henry Ford Museum today to see their Star Trek exhibit before it closes on Sunday. Yeah, part of my habit of seeing things just before they close. After paying the admission fee (Star Trek included) I explored some of the other exhibits, such as the development of machines to make stuff during the 19th Century and the automobile timeline. It’s a cool museum even without the Star Trek exhibit.

The Star Trek exhibit included costumes, props (such as the tricorder), some of the set components (such as captain’s chairs), and models of various spaceships used during filming. There was also a timeline of when the stories of each of the various series (TV and film) took place.

Included were videos of various actors and writers talking about how revolutionary the series were, especially when it began back in 1966. The original series was set in the future to give Gene Roddenberry a way to talk about big issues, such as racism. The cast was intentionally multi-racial – white, black, Asian, and Russian (this was the Cold War) characters working together in harmony. Each series also had a character that wasn’t quite human – Spock, Data, Odo, Whorf, and the holographic Doctor, among others.

One of he videos talked about actual technology trying to catch up to the tech of the shows. We now have computer tablets. The first pocket size portable phones were a “clamshell” design to imitate the communicator of Star Trek. Google is trying to create the all-knowing Computer of the show. The medical community has early versions of the tricorder.

Astronaut Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman in space. She credited Star Trek and Lieutenant Uhura as inspirations.

Several episodes take place in a mirror universe where all the familiar characters have an evil double. This allowed the show’s writers to play with how technology can be used for both good and evil.

I’ve talked about a society without supremacy, without a social hierarchy. I saw such a society in what Roddenberry portrayed on the screen. With the popularity of the franchise there are a lot of people who appreciate seeing a society without ranking and believe it can be done and are working toward it.